Mass Effect 3

You were raised on Mindoir on the fringes of the Attican Traverse. When you were sixteen, the colony was raided by slavers. The entire settlement was razed and your friends and family were slaughtered. A passing Alliance patrol rescued you, but all you loved was destroyed.

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Earthborn Shepard:

You were born on Earth, but you never knew your parents. A child of the streets, you learned to live by your wits and guts, surviving in the hidden underbelly of the megatropolises of humanity's homeworld.

Well to be fair, you background and service history do crop up in dialogue every so often, most prevalently in ME1, where you've also got background-exclusive side quests on the Citadel. And the service history adds extra dialogue to other side quests (for example you know Corporal Toombs personally if pick Sole Survivor.) They rarely get acknowledged in ME2, all that springs to mind is in news announcements (Shepard Memorial Plaza on Elysium for instance) and a followup email related to your ME1 background sidequest. There's more references in ME3, obvious one being Liara's holorecording of you (which also *dun-dun-dun!* acknowledges your class.) I also noticed in the archives in Citadel DLC the holo image next to Shepard is different depending on your background (it showed prefab buildings with bodies laying around for my colonist Shepard.) So yeah, lots of references to your background/service history, next to nothing for your class!

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I wouldn't call that lots. Sure there's plenty in ME1, but it's not a trend they continued. For example, Jade Shepard was an Earthborn Sole Survivor and I hated that in ME2 there was no mention whatsoever of Cerberus's role in what happened on Akuze. Having a news report mention it was just like rubbing salt in the wound, as if Shep didn't even remember what happened.

As for the class, it would have been nice if there was an extra line here and there with certain characters with abilities/interests you have in common. Like that bit of banter about omni-tool preferences between Tali & Kaiden in ME3. Having an engie geek out about tech stuff would have been a nice touch. Or an infiltrator talking sniper shop with Legion and/or Garrus.

OK, the link to the tool I used is now dead, but a little googling turned up this. It's a bit more involved, but it's pretty direct. The alternative if you don't want to muck about with that is to restart an ME2 game with that character, sit though all the rigmarole of getting to the character creation screen then eyballing it so the custom face is identical to your imported face and noting down the face code. Once you have that, the rest is self explanatory.

^Yep, that's what I ended up using. Tada! ME3 still has an odd aversion to red hair though. Half the time it looks dirty blonde. Only under certain lighting conditions and if you squint does it look red.

For example, here Jade actually has red hair, and yet in that scene it looks like she has the same hair colour as Alyxa (who is supposed to be brown haired.)

But yeah, the difference is greater in ME3. Personally I just switched the hair colour to the "new" red hair setting which I'm pretty sure is the same as the new default femShep's. Don't have any good screen shots to show off the difference. She's my main shep and on my first playthough of anything, I almost never remember to hit the screen grab button.

However, while rummaging around for one I did come across this, which I think is just begging for a caption! Dredd reference perhaps?

Oh and while we're at it, why not all share our final photos from Citadel?

Yeah I got the head-twisty thing too first time out. Luckily I saved right before so I was able to try again with better results.

Oh, I meant to say something else about the hair in ME3. This may just be me, but in some scenes (most notably in Javik's quarters) it goes totally transparent. I figure there's something screwy with the graphics engine as the room has that smoky looking atmospheric effect. Shaders overlapping perhaps?

Luckily the Citadel DLC is next up in my trilogy playthrough so I should get the chance to fix it soon.

I can't say that I've had the transparent hair thing, but one thing about my Shep's hair that annoys me is one random strand that appears to be not connected to her head! I use Kelly's ME3 hair mesh as part of a custom headmorph but I must have changed one of the values somewhere as the same random strand isn't there on Kelly. I really should just load it up in gibbed and play around with it, but it's such a small thing that I can't be bothered! it just irritates me when I see it!

I might make a collage of all the people/things knocked the f*ck out by FemShep - The Shadow Broker, Han'Gerrel, Al-Jilani (x3), Elias Kelham (x3).....I'm sure there are more! Hell, even James took a few shots down in the cargo bay!

Oh, I meant to say something else about the hair in ME3. This may just be me, but in some scenes (most notably in Javik's quarters) it goes totally transparent. I figure there's something screwy with the graphics engine as the room has that smoky looking atmospheric effect. Shaders overlapping perhaps?

I might make a collage of all the people/things knocked the f*ck out by FemShep - The Shadow Broker, Han'Gerrel, Al-Jilani (x3), Elias Kelham (x3).....I'm sure there are more! Hell, even James took a few shots down in the cargo bay!

I finished ME3 again over the weekend, this being the first time I played a full campaign with any of the DLC installed, and I must admit that I found the ending to be... decent. It's still the weakest ending of the trilogy, but the Leviathan and Extended Cut DLCs addressed most of my issues. Leviathan introduces the concept of the AI controlling the Reapers earlier in the game so its introduction on the Citadel isn't a huge WTF moment. Also, I kinda like the idea that the Reapers are the product of a race arrogant enough to think themselves gods repeating a mistake they witnessed in "lesser" species, which resulted in their replacement by synthetic beings that also think themselves gods. It's not a perfect explanation, but it's better than some I've seen.

However, my main problem is still the synthesis option. I picked that option this time because it was the only one of the three endings I hadn't "experienced", and while it's the happiest ending in tone, I still can't help but view it as being anything other than thematically inconsistent gobbledygook. In future play-throughs, I'll never pick it again and will prefer to view it as being another one of the AI's crazy unworkable schemes, just like the Reaper cycle was.

One neat thing I noticed: they sped up the end credits if you have the DLC so that the credits end at the same time as the music. In ME2, the music ended long before the credits did if you had all the DLC. Also, the credits now contain a little tribute to Robin Sachs, which is nice.

I'd agree that the DLC somewhat saves the third game. Each adds something to the overall story - Leviathan adds key contextual stuff, Omega adds some decent action set pieces, and Citadel is the emotional end to the franchise.

Even now I can only tolerate the destroy ending. Picking control just makes me feel that I've been wrong all along, and that TIM has been right. Synthesis, speaks for itself, creepy magic gobbledygook.

I don't mind the control option. I had a suspicion throughout ME3 that TIM was probably onto something, so the fact that he's half-right at the end makes sense for me. I still didn't pick that option as it was a little too close to slavery for me, genocide somehow seemed fairer.

That actually shows up one of the problems with the game's auto-dialogue. My main Shep was a paragade that saved the Collector base and left Cerberus on good terms, and he would have been willing to hear TIM out on Mars if the game had let me make that choice. But no, "You're either with me or against me!" When did Shep become a Republican Space Ranger?